Why a Yammer Edition?

Combining WorkSimple’s Social Goal platform with Yammer, the leading enterprise social network, has been an exciting developer effort for us.

Imagine, you’re already conversing and learning from your coworkers on Yammer. Now, you’re creating and updating your Social Goals on WorkSimple. Shouldn’t you be able to share your goals and recognition with your Yammer network? With the Yammer Edition, we share your goals, accomplishments, and recognition to your Yammer network.

Not only that, but wouldn’t it be cool to gather praise you receive on Yammer with your WorkSimple Social Goal recognition? The positive feedback you receive now will automatically populate your WorkSimple profile.

Yes, this is a rich integration between Yammer and WorkSimple. It’s so useful, we made it into its own Yammer Edition.

What does it look like?

Here are some screenshots of the WorkSimple / Yammer integration:

Yammer Discussions.

Yammer Praise.

Yammer Single Sign In.

How do you check out the WorkSimple Yammer Edition? Click here.

Here’s what our CEO, Morgan Norman, had to say about it.

“Yammer is the most widely adopted Enterprise Social Network platform in the market today, and we are excited to demonstrate Social Performance Management innovation at the first-ever YamJam show. Social Performance is revolutionizing how people work together by offering new tools for collaboration that aim to drive employee engagement, empowerment and productivity—and WorkSimple is leading the charge.”

YamJam ’12 is going to be dope. Those in attendance will be catching the Yammer vision with peeks into how to reinvent work from workplace experts. Come hang with us and identify next steps to transform your business! Join a community of like-minded peers and thought leaders from cutting-edge companies as we show everyone how Social Performance helps every team and business leverage better ways to work together—and reach new heights of collaboration and productivity.

Come on. You can’t resist that, can you?

Catch the Social fever!

As the dust settles on the HR Technology Conference, the big takeaway is clear: Social Performance is transformative.

Recognizing this paradigm shift, Human Capital Management (HCM) vendors are either incorporating or plan to incorporate social elements into their products. There are many different approaches to the social shift—and it’s still early in the revolution—but Social HCM is a concept that’s gaining fast momentum.

“Human capital will be defined more through the notion of community and how to manage that community. And your role in HR will be to continue the connections that define that community,” Tom Koulopoulos, president and co-founder of the Boston-based innovation consultancy Delphi Group and author of numerous books, including his latest Cloud Surfing: A New Way to Think About Risk, Innovation, Scale and Success, said in his HR Technology Conference keynote address.

Transparency, Collaboration, Innovation & Community

In the social enterprise, the goal is no longer merely minimizing the costs of hiring and firing—it’s about driving transparency, collaboration, innovation—and community. Social Performance drives community through informal and formal social feedback via activity streams, badges, recognition and other social rewards.

“The HCM technology market is undergoing a significant shift,” says Yvette Cameron, vice president and principal analyst at Constellation Research. “As we move from systems of transactions to systems of engagement, traditional ‘HCM’ processes will be redefined, and it is only natural that new solution providers emerge from outside the HCM space.”

At the heart of Social Performance—and a driver of the significant shift in the HCM technology market—is Social Goals. Social Goals lets employees, managers and executives create, publish and track goals among a community of workers. Instant feedback and real-time recognition follows, along with the ability to see how work from different teams and departments intersect. The end result is higher employee enablement and engagement, knowledge acceleration and productivity.

Social Performance Predictions

At the beginning of this year, WorkSimple’s Social Performance gurus predicted that that as the HCM revolution intersects with the Social Goals revolution, hiring managers will embrace the paradigm shift toward measuring results in 2012. That transition is currently underway. We also predicted the following:

• Although performance management won’t completely disappear from the workplace scene, the foundations of this 30-year old model will begin crumbling under the pressure of employee demand for more agile Social Performance tools.
• Companies will tap into Web 2.0 technologies to provide real-time employee feedback.
• Driving employee engagement will be a hot topic as employers look for ways to retain the best and brightest talent.
• Once solely the domain of Human Resources, in 2012 performance management will take a giant leap toward HCM thanks to the rise of enterprise tools.
• When it comes to adopting enterprise technologies, employees are increasingly making their voice heard. In 2012, we’ll see the same trend on the performance management front.

Those predictions came true and the Social Performance revolution is in full gear. Going forward, employees will continue pushing for social tools in the enterprise and executives will make stronger investments in these tools as they see the results of Social Performance Management and Social Rewards.

Social Goals is poised to not only disrupt the workplace, but also drive it to new levels of efficiency and effectiveness. And WorkSimple has the platform enterprises need to engage employees with Social Goals.

We spent some time analyzing employees and first-time managers and designed our new feedback app with them in mind:

Peer-to-peer — Why does feedback on your goals only come from your manager? We believe your coworkers might be able to give you feedback on your work. Heck, they’re often in a better position than your manager to see what’s working and what’s not.

Lightweight — Giving feedback can sometimes feel like a weighty endeavor. We’ve designed feedback specifically to handle this issue by making it guided and easy to engage with. Simply select our feedback type by What’s Working, Suggestion, or Area for Improvement. These simple cues open the door for employee-to-employee feedback who are reluctant to give potentially critical feedback.

Work-related — Feedback is most easily given (and received) when it’s about the work and not the person. That’s why we focused our feedback app on the work itself via Social Goals. Just go to a goal, click the feedback tab, and start helping each other raise the bar!

For HR and other Performance customers, we heard that this feedback would be really valuable on the performance review. We went ahead and made feedback automatically populate the review. You can even run the new Coaching & Feedback report to see who is giving feedback and more importantly coach managers to give balanced feedback: positive, suggestions, and constructive.

You’ve seen our focus on simplicity and engagement with Social Goals and Recognition — our new Feedback app will help your employees help each other improve. Jumpstart your feedback culture with WorkSimple today!

WorkSimple claimed both until Salesforce.com joined the Social Performance party this week with Work.com. Salesforce.com snapped up Rypple earlier this year and rebranded and relaunched the company with the Work.com moniker at Dreamforce.

But around here, we not only work — we WorkSimple. And we’re leading employees toward the future of work — a future that’s more productive, more profitable, and more rewarding.

At the end of the day it doesn’t really matter who launched the Social Performance revolution. The larger point is that traditional performance reviews are going the way of the dinosaur. WorkSimple and Salesfore.com are forerunners of a Social HR revolution as buzzwords like “Agile Workforce”, “Social Goals“, and “Human Capital Management” spin in Social Enterprise headlines.

But why did we launch a Social Performance revolution?

Easy. We believe that you need a Social Performance platform that works the way you do. Traditional Performance Management views are like clunky old cars that can’t take you where you want to go because they break down on the highway.

In an on-demand age where employees in traditional offices need to collaborate and communicate toward goals with distributed, mobile, and virtual workforces, the wheels fall off traditional Performance Management platforms.

Modern workers expect more than the bi-annual meeting with management that offers little in the way of valuable feedback. They want real-time coaching as they make their way from goal creation to the goal finish line. They want the ability to tap into the brainpower of knowledge workers that sit in the cubicle next to them — or across the country from them. They want recognition for a job well done now, not six months later.

We’re glad Salesforce.com is in the Social Performance game because it raises the visibility of the revolution we quietly launched some years ago. We may not be the only Social Performance platform in town anymore, but we were still the first. And we’re still committed to driving the social workplace toward the future of work through affordable social tools that drive value to the bottom line from the bottom to the top.

I’ve been at my current job for about three years and I don’t feel fulfilled anymore. Because of this, I lack motivation to complete tasks or even meet goals in the way I know I could if I was happier. I really like my organization and admire the work that we do, but I also don’t want to risk my personal happiness. Is there anything I can do before I call it quits?
- David W.

David, you’re in a situation many professionals find themselves in at one point or another. Though your commitment to your company is admirable (and these days pretty rare), it doesn’t take away from the fact that you’re essentially bored, and therefore unhappy, at your job. A happy workplace is important. In fact, a recent Forbes article indicated that happiness is lead by engagement (i.e. interest) in the organization, as well as the individual position. Without it, productivity and profits will likely fall.

However, David, you’re in a different league. You want to stick around, probably because you have respect for your organization. But you also realize that your mental health and happiness is indeed important.

No worries, we have you covered. Here’s what David — and anyone else in a similar position — should do to improve their happiness at work:

1. Assess what’s making you unhappy

For David, motivation is a central problem. This could stem from, among others, his manager, his co-workers, the type of work he does, his routine, his work hours, etc.  To make a change, David has to first assess where the motivation issue comes from and then make changes based on the problem.

The first thing is you have to assess are a couple items for yourself — results, enjoyment, success, and fun. Many times in organizations we feel we are not moving forward because we are missing a sense of trust, security, or money, and don’t understand how our work is making a difference to our customers, coworkers, or the company and team as whole. This results in stress, uncertainty, and quickly the joy is sucked out of the workplace.

The fact is that business is transforming from work to enjoyment, from control to self-managing. To be happy in our workplace we need to move from the view that work is a burden to work becoming inspiration. Ask yourself what are your “I wants” and go from there.

2. Make small adjustments

If David is bored, but wants to stay in the organization, he has to make an effort to change how he does things now in order to be in a better mental state later. Not doing so will only sabotage his job.

Think about your responsibilities in a couple areas: passion(s), money, and purpose. Then consider if you have to cross over into a new role, new team, or new organization to find a good blend of these.

For instance, if he’s not motivated because of his work environment, perhaps he can try working from home or remotely? If David has a hard time getting excited for his job because he’s doing the same thing everyday, maybe he can switch up his routine or ask for new tasks? Little changes like these may seem small, but he’s actually giving his mind something new to focus on, which could make a lot of headway.

3. Go big

David tried to use a different computer program to design those ads, but he still feels bored. Or maybe he worked from Starbucks but was more interested in his neighbor’s conversation than ad copy. If this happens, it’s obvious that the problem may be his actual job, not the way he does it. So, David has to go big.

Let’s go with the previous example and say David worked in advertising. If he’s bored with it, maybe it’s time to switch industries, but still work in the same company. If David has an interest in social media, perhaps he can move over to that department. If he’s noticed that he has a real knack for sales, maybe he can be the one pitching ideas to big clients.

Lateral moves like these can aid in David’s “I admire my company, but my job is boring so I’m unhappy” problem. He’s doing something new, he’s interested in it, and he’s therefore happier because he’s more engaged.

However, David needs to be sure he obtains the necessary skills or education in order to be a viable candidate for a move like this, such as getting another degree, industry experience, a recommendation, etc. When all the factors are considered and done, David can have the best of both worlds: a company he loves and a job he’s happy to do. We’d call that a win.

What do you think? What are some other steps to improve your career happiness?

Want some career advice? Shoot us your questions on Facebook or Twitter and you may be featured on our blog!

While some managers may point their busy schedules as the culprit, it’s critical that leaders invest in their teams so that they can positively contribute to the organization. Additionally, just because managers have lots to take care of, it doesn’t mean there isn’t an easy way to coach employees. On the contrary, tools like automated performance reviews can get the job done without dedicating lots of resources. It just has to happen often. Here’s how:

Progress updates
When employees show their progress on a goal, managers can tell them what they are doing right or wrong in real-time, not months later. Automated performance reviews ensure that managers are giving employees the advice and the direction they need as they are making progress on it.

For example, Amy on the financial accounting team is having a hard time completing her goals this quarter because of her work load. Progress updates can show Amy’s manager that things need to be shifted around so Amy isn’t as overwhelmed anymore, allowing her to perform better because she is not struggling anymore.

Shows goals accomplished
It can be difficult for managers to track what’s been completed and what needs work. With automated performance reviews, managers can see what goals have been accomplished and what’s still in progress. This not only helps team leaders manage their employees better, it can also show who’s doing what well, what needs more work, and how to assign goals in the future.

Social recognition  
Everyone loves a pat on the back, right? Well, social recognition can be the motivation an employee needs to continue to work well and stay engaged, all while solidifying their reasons for remaining at the organization.

For instance, if Joe in Sales found a great lead, his manager needs to publicly acknowledge his performance. Tools like recognition badges can exhibit why Joe is good at his job. This makes Joe feel special, while at the same time lighting a fire under his team members to get on his level as well. It’s a win-win for both sides.

What do you think? What are some other ways automated performance reviews can help organizations?

Maybe his song was inspired after a long day on the job with no recognition from his bandmates or his label. Hey, it could have happened. Do you know that 52 percent of workers today feel that they are not being recognized for their efforts? Instead of getting all bummed about it, maybe Scotty Stappy put it in a song? Maybe he directed his disgruntled state of mind towards something positive? Maybe.

But seriously, it’s sad. It’s sad that so many of us feel that we are not receiving adequate recognition on the job—especially since it’s really pretty painless (and not to mention fun!) to give accolades to our fellow workers and employees. And there are so many different ways we can do this.

We posted this question to our Facebook page today:  How do you thank your employees or coworkers when they do an awesome job?  Do you send a short email? Present a plaque? Slip them a check for ten thousand dollars? (In our collective dreams!) I’ve heard of everything from bobbleheads to buttons to love machines. Don’t ask about that last one. Just google it. Wait. Let me google that for you.

At WorkSimple, we have our way of acknowledging awesome as well with recognition badges. Badges get a bad rap in some circles but ours aren’t tied to any sort of popularity contest or gamification. They’re just there as a virtual dap, a high five, a wink. They’re way pretty and way easy and we use them to let others know we appreciate them. Simple as that. Yep. We keep it simple.

I think ol’ Scotty would be into this. Scotty, holler at us! As for everyone else, what do you think? How do you thank employees and coworkers for a job well done? How do you take them higher? 

Although it may be difficult to transform the habits of your team, it’s possible to tweak how you manage them so that these habits transform into something that produces the positive results you’re looking for. Here’s how:

1. Set focus and direction

Believe it or not, some employees may be disengaged or bored because they have no idea what direction they should be going in. Solve this by putting them on the right path, ensuring they understand what is expected of them.

How to do it: Start by aligning the company and team focus with goals that your team can work toward. When they understand the overarching objective, the goals that need to be met along the way will make more sense. In addition, put team members with the goals that align with their direction so that workers can perform to their full capacity.

2. Improve conversations

Employees need to have have an ongoing conversation with their colleagues, as well as from you, in order to be fully aware of what’s going on, what needs to be improved, and what they can expect for the future. These conversations can also drive the engagement levels of your team since they are constantly informed and never kept in the dark about what is expected of them.

How to do it: Set up activity feeds, email notifications, and weekly reports which house company and team updates. This allows your team to stay in the loop, even if you’re not physically there to work with them directly.

3. Encourage collaboration

Collaboration is one of the keys to stellar performance. After all, team members who work together are more likely to come up with better ideas since they are essentially feeding off one another.

How to do it: Showcase work that has been accomplished, goals in progress, and goal priorities. In addition, be sure to promote teamwork and engage workers so that they actually have an avenue to work together.

4. Have coaching sessions

Like the old adage goes, no man is an island. The same goes for your team members. Having coaching sessions allows your team to understand why they are doing something right or doing something wrong. Assuming that they already know doesn’t do much to improve their performance and discounts any progress they could be making in their own careers.

How to do it: Sit down often with each team member and actually go through their work in real-time. When doing so, evaluate how they can improve or what they can continue doing so that they are constantly in the know about their individual performance. You can also automate the performance review process by giving performance ratings, feedback and recognition. The combination of these allows employees to be constantly aware of their progress without having to wonder about it.

What do you think? What are some other ways to revive your team?

So what’s a better way to evaluate employees? Perhaps by making performance more social and using tools like WorkSimple. Check out the full article here, and let us know what you think in the comments below!